A Winning Week for Corporations and Wall Street—Paid for by Your Health and Retirement

Posted on May 12, 2017May 11, 2017 by Shaun O'Brien

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Corporations and Wall Street won big last week, and working people will pay a high price for it. Here are three things Congress did for Big Business that will harm working people’s health care and retirement:

1. 7 million fewer people will get workplace health benefits. Last Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the so-called American Health Care Act by a vote of 217-213. This is the bill that President Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) are using to repeal much of the Affordable Care Act and that will cut health coverage for some 24 million people. The U.S. Senate now has to vote.

Professional lobbying groups that represent employers, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are behind this bill because it guts the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that large and mid-size employers offer their full-time employees adequate, affordable health benefits or risk paying a penalty. According to Congress’s budget experts, within 10 years, this bill will result in 7 million fewer Americans getting employer-provided health insurance. Corporate interests also like the huge tax cuts in the House bill, especially the $28 billion for prescription drug corporations and $145 billion for insurance companies.

Big company CEOs—the people who now earn 347 times more what front-line workers earn—are probably salivating over the huge personal tax cuts they will get from the Republican bill. One estimate is that those with million-dollar incomes will receive an average yearly tax cut of more than $50,000. The 400 highest-income households in the United States get an average tax cut of $7 million.

2. As many as 38 million workers will be blocked from saving for retirement at work. The Senate voted 50-49 last Wednesday to stop states from creating retirement savings programs for the 38 million working people whose employers do not offer any kind of retirement plan. The House already had voted to do this, and Trump is expected to sign off on it.

In the absence of meaningful action by the federal government, states have stepped in to address the growing retirement security crisis. But groups that carry water for Wall Street companies, like the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, have been actively lobbying Congress and Trump to stop states from helping these workers.

3. More than 100 million retirement investors may lose protections against conflicted investment advice. The House Financial Services Committee approved the so-called Financial CHOICE Act on a party-line vote last Thursday. It now goes to the full House of Representatives, and then to the Senate. In addition to gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that protects working people from abusive banking practices and ripping out many of the other financial reforms adopted after the 2008 financial crisis, this bill overturns key investor protections for people who have IRAs and 401(k)s. A massive coalition of Wall Street firms and their lobbying groups has been fighting to undo these retirement protections by any means possible.

This blog originally appeared at AFL-CIO on May 11, 2017. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Shaun O’Brien is the Assistant Director for Health and Retirement in the AFL-CIO’s Policy Department, where he oversees development of the Federation’s policies related to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and work-based health and retirement plans. Immediately prior to joining the AFL- CIO, he held several positions at AARP, including the Vice President for the My Money Portfolio and Senior Vice President for Economic Security. O’Brien holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from American University and a law degree from Cornell Law School.

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